CUTBACKS

by Catherine McGuire

Cartoon by Politico's Matt Wuerker

“It’s gotten hard,” he said, shaking out a Lucky
from the pack, lighting, sucking nicotine.
“Bank slammed us with overdrafts, landlord
wants us out. Two jobs folded –
there’s nothing in this county. Nothing.”

Drizzle feathers his worn shearling coat.
He glances at me, away.
Under the anger, terror. At thirty,
strong, skilled, he chases two-bit jobs, like mine.
Between rabbits, he tells me of the farms shut down,
or selling out, of the rattle-trap car too complex
for him to fix. The job forms, the ad in Craigs List,
the silence. He dispatches the second rabbit,
cuts short its squeal with practiced aim.

He shrugs. “Might have to leave. Alaska,
shale fields… but moving costs money – what if
there’s nothing there?”
I give him five bucks, offer him a rabbit,
let him have his pick of homemade jams.
No welfare for single white men.
Let them work, the Lear jet crowd sneers.
or let them starve.


Catherine McGuire has had almost 300 poems published in venues such as: Adagio, Avocet, Folio, Fireweed, FutureCycle, Green Fuse, Main Street Rag, New Verse News, Nibble, Portland Lights Anthology and Tapjoe. Her chapbook, Palimpsests, was released by Uttered Chaos in 2011. She has three self-published chapbooks.

UNEMPLOYED

by David Radavich

Cartoon by Jen Sorensen

WASHINGTON — Republicans muscled a pared-back agriculture bill through the House on Thursday, stripping out the food stamp program to satisfy recalcitrant conservatives but losing what little Democratic support the bill had when it failed last month. It was the first time food stamps had not been a part of the farm bill since 1973. --NY Times, July 11, 2013

The only thing
I can withhold
is my body.

If there’s nothing
to take home,
no living wage,

no mortgage
no health care
no schooling,

the fat cats
will need to eat
their own gold.

Work for sawdust
is a transaction
I refuse.

As the sun
goes down
alone

I can live
and breathe
my blood

so long
as it lasts.


David Radavich’s recent collections include America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007), Canonicals: Love’s Hours (2009), and Middle-East Mezze (2011).  His plays have been performed across the U.S., including six Off-Off-Broadway, and in Europe.  His new collection, The Countries We Live In, will come out later this year.

WILL WORK FOR FOOD

by Janice D. Soderling

Madrid Homeless from The Sketchbook Blog of Louis Netter

If the 44m people who are unemployed in the mainly rich members of the OECD lived in one country, its population would be similar to Spain's– The Economist

Rain trickles down the pane
in unpredictable paths.
A flyspeck, a chance gust
can alter water's course.

In the cold glare of a department store window,
a coughing man beds down on the sidewalk,
inside a black garbage bag. Only eleven pm
and already November. I think of socialism
as a bird, or a tree; as upward motion, dignity.
It is not a coin tossed grandly in a cup.
Some define it as a moral choice,
a plan for upholding civilization.
Others simply call it fair play.


Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. Recent work at Kin, Prose Poem Project, Origami Poem Project, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Thrice Fiction and forthcoming at American Arts Quarterly, Literary Bohemian, Boston Literary Magazine and Penduline Press. In October 2012, she was featured reader at the Rattle Reading Series (La Cañada/Greater Los Angeles), and special guest at First Wednesday Formal Reading Series (Oakland/Greater San Francisco).